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Today, I took Darinka for a walk, and did what I do to remind myself what a hearing dog is like . Darine went off to the far end, so she was over 200 yds from me. I said "Darine!" at a conversational volume when people are talking outdoors, so only a bit raised voice. And she came running (I often call her starting with the very low volume to see what is the minimum that works so that I keep low volume when training, and I keep getting surprised). It makes me cringe to think what she must have felt when I trained with her not knowing that my volume was actually always set for a hard-of-hearing dog from early on .

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Maja, not sure if you will see this or not, but I am curious about Darinka's hips. It's been almost 2 years since your last post, and I really enjoyed reading about your training dilemmas and breakthroughs. She is a lovely girl! I'm just curious about how you & she are doing now, and about how her hips turned out?

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I am a very elite breeder that specializes in extreme niche breeding, called non-breeding :lol: , I have four bitches now, that were supposed to be breeding bitches, but none of them is, and only Kelly out of the four had puppies, but was pulled out of breeding due to epilepsy in her pups. And I have frozen semen that I have no bitch to use for :lol: .

For Darine, her displasia is very slight in one hip, and many people breed dogs with this level of HD, but for me she would have to be very exceptional otherwise to risk a litter out of her, and she's not. But in everyday work she is very agile and the concept of fence does not apply to her apparently. I do have a feeling though of sitting on a time bomb waiting, thinking that with my luck so far, we will get to a half decent level of training and her hips will start causing her problems and that will be that.

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For Darine, her displasia is very slight in one hip, and many people breed dogs with this level of HD, but for me she would have to be very exceptional otherwise to risk a litter out of her, and she's not.

Thanks you for making this very responsible decision, both for Darinka and your other dogs!

I know there are other breeders who would make the same choices, but there are far too many who don't and it hurts the breed as a whole.

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I kind of prefer the kelpie technique . One meat sheep once tried to lie down on top of tunneling Bonnie, so when I realized what Darinka was up to I was a bit concerned, because they are very tight in there.

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Our Bute would do either, over or under. He was a dog without fear of tight spaces and pressure.

I've always liked sheep backing, and I must try it somehow with Darinka. In the situation in the vid backing would be perhaps not practical since the sheep were plastered against the back of the pen pretty tight, so I don't know how she would get them out. I have to arrange some kind of shoot. I like trying weird things with my dogs, but with Darinka I have to be careful.

The other day she was driving the sheep away and one of the sheep went off and Darine missed it. So I told her "look back" she didn't hear, so I repeated, except the sheep went back and almost caught up with the flock and the command didn't make sense any more. So Darine indeed looked back remembering that the other field, separated by two fences and about 300yrds contained sheep too. So she tried to go there. And I had to stop her. I was so mad at myself. because her reaction was excellent, and with her style thinking, she might now think that "look back" is not what she thought it was .